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tv   Chinese Reaction to President Trump Climate Change Announcement  CSPAN  June 2, 2017 4:55pm-5:12pm EDT

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and paris, and i will be discussing this. in the next few days i will be talking about their commitment. finally, france will propose a concrete action plan in order to increase its attractiveness for researchers and entrepreneurs involved in the ecological transition. we will take practical initiatives in europe and africa on this issue. i have asked the government to work on this actively and will hold a meeting with the government on this topic next week. we will not only keep our commitments from the past from this very evening. france must be even more ambitious for the future, for our future. long live the republic, long live france.
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>> there you just heard the u.s. president donald trump make the announcement that the united states will leave the paris climate accord. we have a team of reporters around the world. you can adjust car live at the white house. let's start with nathan. trump has some pretty critical comments about the deal itself saying it was unfair, a bad deal for the united states. he also had something to say about china. >> where do we start. what a speech. it is an america first speech and the strongest we've seen from president trump so far. i think it can be encapsulated in one line, i was elected to represent the citizens of pittsburgh, not paris and you're absolutely right, laying into countries like china, saying that china could continue increasing its admissions for another 13 years until 2030 while the
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u.s. has to bring down its emissions. basically saying the same about india, it can build hundreds of coal fired power plants over the life of the agreement while the u.s. can't. he called it a massive redistribution of wealth away from the united states to the rest of the world, essentially a bad deal. he also laid into the green climate fund. this mechanism was set up before the paris agreement but it essentially became a central part of it were developed countries like the united states would pay into a fund to offset the cost of moving away from fossil fuel to developing nations to help them build that infrastructure. it is costly, but the u.s. led the way and hopefully other people were going to follow. he has basically said they are not paying anymore. he said they paid over a billion dollars and that is going to stop. the big question is the big international reverberation.
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if the u.s. stops paying for developing countries to catch up and turn their economies, a lot of countries could pull out. india being one of them. a very tough speech. he was also saying he didn't think that even if the commitments were kept that we would see much change on climate. we will be fact checking this all night, but he said there would only be two tenths of a degree decrease over the time but the whole idea is to stop an increase. a very tough speech indeed, a very america first speech and he did lea leave the window open for renegotiation. he said we will sit down with other people, we can renegotiate but for now we are out of the agreement. who's going to negotiate with him after a speech like this. >> he said he wants to renegotiate. we'll have to wait and see what happens.
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we want to pull up this tweet that donald trump actually sent out before he became president. back in 2012 donald trump blamed china for global warming and climate change. he has been back and forth on this issue several times. let's bring in jessica stone who joins us live from the white house. jessica, we saw he has a lot of supporters on the side of climate change being a hoax, what more can you tell us about his positions in the past? >> his position has certainly evolved and we've seen that with a number of positions on a variety of issues, climate being no different. we talked earlier about the fact that eight years ago he was part of a group of people who signed a letter calling on president barack obama to form a global climate deal to address a warming planet, and yet now, eight years later, he is reversing the most historic effort to do so to date in the very same place, the rose garden of the white house
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where just about a year ago the u.s. president, barack obama was signing, was noting that the agreement had come in. on november 4, that is actually the date that there was enough signatures to bring it into force. four days later was the u.s. election. : he says hasn't happened in recent years. i'm just struck by the national epic poem that he took that made it a 70 issue.
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this was an issue that conservatives, republicans had brought up during the negotiation of the paris climate agreement and resisted the negotiation of putting the united states in a position where it had accountability to other countries. that was how it was sold. the reality is this agreement didn't have a lot of enforcement. it was a nationally determined contribution, each individual country came up with them and was agreeing to abide by them. it can be changed. what i want to know for you, elaine, you talked about renegotiation and there is no mechanism to renegotiate. what options to change the us climate posture with respect to international agreement are simply starting all over or starting a new agreement completely. basically the same thing, there is no renegotiation renegotiating the paris climate agreement. >> left listening to what the president said. he basically said right after he mentioned the us would leave and
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left listen to what he said a few moments ago. >> begin negotiations to reenter either the paris accord or the entirely new transaction on terms that are fair to the united states, its businesses, its workers, its people, its taxpayers. >> iris joins us live from berlin. ira we know that chains were in berlin meeting with the german chancellor. no doubt he will have some interesting reaction once this is all over but what did he have earlier? >> the chinese premier stressing again his commitment to honor china's commitment under the paris agreement and let's listen to what he had to say earlier here in berlin.
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so, basically this raises a whole host of questions for chinas, america's international partners and how to move forward with whether this agreement is in a shambles or whether it can be renegotiated as donald trump suggested which seems like a very difficult process. world leaders like chancellor merkel and the chinese premier will really have a lot of pressure into how they will respond. we did get a sense of at least china's position earlier in berlin from the premier. [speaking in native tongue] |1 translator: 0 our word count interactions should be flexible. climate change and china doesn't stand alone in this discussion. our areas we follow the client protection development very
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closely. >> that was a very memorable speech by those who were not familiar with his worldview and were exposed to that america first rhetoric not just trump as a candidate but now as a president and that is certainly something that concerns many people surely here in germany and around the world who were barely excited about the paris climate agreement which is now and perhaps grave danger because of the united states position. >> premier lee headed next to brussels where no doubt there will be a hot topic at the china summit. untrained in the next day or so. we want to take a look less than a year ago when us president, then barack obama made the historic announcement about the us joining the paris climate agreement that also happened in the rose garden in 2016.
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>> today is a historic day in the fight to protect our planet for future generations. ten months ago in paris i said, before the world, that we needed a strong global agreement to reduce carbon pollution and to set the world on a low carbon course. the result was the paris climate agreement. >> let's get your thoughts, our panel is joining us now, david public citizen's climate progr program, ed hutchins the research director at the hartman institute and he's been with me throughout the speech. just your first reaction to what the president had to say. >> i endorsed and just about happy to hear all of it. especially the fact that this is something that has crippled american, could cripple american
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businesses and competitiveness. i'm very happy that he's pro energy, energy is a good thing not a bad thing. it's a pro- coal. coal is an important part of our energy mix. i have actually won disagreement, maybe two. the first is i don't know what there is to renegotiate. i don't see anything there. i'm not concerned about global warming, i think that is very questionable and as he pointed out the actual results of the baconian measures are not going to be very dramatic in any case. i'm not sure what there is to renegotiate. one other thing that i want to nuances with is that for example, china rightly wants to deal with this real pollution problem. okay? with smog in the cities and so forth. that's valid for any country in the united states. and you don't have to do it in terms of global warming, you can do it in terms of this is good for the chinese people. i would also like to see the european stop drinking the kool-aid, as we like to say, and
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understand that their crippling themselves. i want to see a strong european economy and a strong china economy and strong india economy but these kinds of measures are destructive to those markets. >> that's why there saying everyone can do their own thing and accomplish their goals without having to. >> one of the reasons why the european want us to stay in is that they been crippling themselves. they bought into a whole environmental, i think, both bogus arguments in the german enemy energy costs are going to the roof. president trump talked about the danger of handouts in the united states and they have them in germany. we don't want them to come here. the germans want to group themselves, i don't think that's good for germany and the germany will pull out, frankie. i was happy to see the speech and accept the fact that he leaves it open to renegotiation, i don't think they need to renegotiate. >> david, i saw you taking notes
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during the speech as well. >> i might agree with ed, which is shocking, it doesn't make much sense to renegotiate or sustain it at all. >> do you think he would say not to keep people happy to work without closing the door may be appealing some of the other people within his own staff that were against this move. >> i was able trump, anything is possible. who knows what the man is thinking it is true that if you think this global warming is a hoax there's no reason to talk about renegotiating the deal. i wouldn't count on any of this making actual sense because it doesn't. he said america first and this is in america last possible with his climate legacy he's basically icing himself. besides the captain, ethical problems, even if none of that existed trump's decision on climate change alone was pretty much secure him a spot is one of the worst president of american history. this is america last. even if you set aside climate change, we should be investing in client better energy, we should be engaging in healthy competition with china, with the
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european union over who will lead the way for the energy of the future which will be cleaner and cheaper. >> let me point you to something that was set on tuesday by the white house press secretary, sean spicer whether humans are to blame for everything. listening. >> can you say whether or not the president believes that human activity is affect the climate perspective. >> i can get back to you. >> is that a decision he still trying to make? >> i don't know. i visit, have asked them that specific question. >> were at the white house listening to all this. even our discussion in the studio, nathan, your thoughts on what efforts of our. >> i think you've made this a purely economic terms and also a national. [inaudible] the us is a laughing stock to the rest of the world. the rest of the world is taking advantage of the us. this is about transfer of wealth and jobs away from the united states. this is the most combative speech we have heard from a us
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president in a very long time when it comes to the rest of the world. if he thought the snobs of nato that we saw and g7, well, this is a whole new league. it's quite incredible. to basically turn around to the rest of the world and say you're duping the united states with billions of trillions of dollars and a painted shackles on us when it's unfair, some of the biggest three partners of the us retirement china, eastern european union, it's quite an incredible thing to do. it's very important that he doesn't come out as a climate change science denier but that he's making this purely economical and saying that to deliver on the growth the job that he wants, the forgotten people, in the us he needs fossil fuels to do it and he can't be restrained by the rest of the world. quite an incredible abandonment of where we were -- by the way, president president barack obama issued a statement while we have
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been talking and you can imagine it's very different from the speech that we heard he's basically saying the inner green information, investment that the us has led is now under threat and encouraging the states and other companies individuals to take up a mantle where leadership is lacking. his words not mine. >> if paris climate agreement is trying to reduce the number one us is pulling out right now how much will that affect the end goal of the paris climate agreement project let's be clear, no one country can stop action on climate change. the world is moving through a cleaner economy and that this is a huge economic opportunity and canada wants to create good jobs and wants to grow our economy and create opportunities for business and that is why we support the paris agreement.

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